Support workers under NDIS undoubtedly play a vital role for participants’ well-being. As a carer, you offer dignity, respect to the people with disability and promote independence and autonomy in their life. Here ZedCare Ability Services – as one of the leading registered NDIS providers in Australia will share this elaborated article and try to find out the ways with which a support worker can deliver the optimum level of care and compassionate assistance to the people with disability.
Importance of Offering Optimum Care & Assistance
The NDIS started its offerings with the sole aim to provide people with disability an independent and rewarding life. To keep the criteria met, a support worker must be at the very front of their services. Your care can make all the difference to the participants including in their goal achievement but in order to do that, you must understand each participants’ unique needs and requirement.
Role Played By Support Worker In NDIS Care
A support worker plays the leading role when it comes to offering NDIS services to the participants. There are many ways they can help people with disability achieve their goals such as providing assistance in daily life, personal care, household chores, community access and many more. The prime aim of the support worker is to work with the participant to make sure he/she receives the ample amount of care to achieve their personal goals and live an independent life.
Whether you are an experienced care giver, or new to the NDIS, we will be guiding you how to deliver best care and support for the people with disability.
Understanding The Needs Of The Participants
It is quite obvious that no two persons are alike and so will be their choices and preferences. It is one the prime responsibilities of a support worker to talk with the participant and understand their individual goals and requirement. This helps the carer to deliver the participant with the most personalised care essentially required to meet their needs. The services may include developing a personalised care plan or offering specialised support according to the changing needs of the participant. In this case taking a person centric approach towards the participant may help the carer mitigating the needs and requirement of the people with disability.
Building Friendly Relationship With The Participant
A healthy and friendly relationship between a participant and his/her carer is one of the key aspects of a successful caregiving. Friendly communication and conversation with the participant can help build trust, reliability and positive relation between the both. A support worker must have patience to listen to the participant carefully, understand their needs, and show genuine response to their feedbacks.
In this case, being a good listener is the best option for the support worker. A good listener doesn’t often miss the detailing of the needs and preferences. Also being empathetic is crucial as it means as a carer you have the ability to not only to understand their feelings but also appreciate their view and effort they want to manifest before everyone. By doing all these it will be easier for a care giver to understand their participants as well as their choices and goals.
Need of Positive and Supportive Environment
Creating a safe, positive and supportive environment is another important aspect of delivering good care and support. There are some specific strategies a support worker can take into consideration to create such environment for the participants such as:
- Building Friendliness With The Participants
Building up a good relationship takes time, and this can be done by spending time with the participants to know what they like and dislike, their preferences, and so on. As a carer you can engage them in regular conversations by participating in things they are interested in or even just by listening to what they have to say.
- Creating an Welcoming and Friendly Atmosphere
If the participant is living in an accommodation, the support worker can make a ‘homely’ atmosphere for the participant by proper cleaning, tidiness or by innovatively decorating the entire space. Moreover, adding a vase full of flowers or hanging a ‘welcome’ board can do all the magic.
- Promoting Activity Participation
Encouraging participants in taking part in an activity program of their liking can significantly enhance the quality of their life. It will also help the participant to be open up about discussing their personalised goals to his/her support worker making things nice and easy.
Offering Best Support & Care
Another key aspect of support workers’ role under NDIS is to offer most personalised support and assistance to the participants. These may include the following:
- Assisting participants with personal care tasks such as bathing, dressing and grooming.
- Supporting participants with meal preparation and feeding, if required.
- Assisting participants with mobility, including transfers and positioning.
- Providing participants with medication reminders and administering medications as needed.
- Engaging participants to take part in activities which promote their physical, mental and social well-being.
Delivering a good care to the NDIS participants requires that support workers maintain high standards of hygiene and safety. Some of the best practices and methods that a support worker can implement may include:
- Keeping good hand hygiene by washing hands regularly and using sanitizers to prevent germ spread.
- Maintaining proper infection control through wearing personal protective equipment, where necessary.
- Ensuring general living space and common areas are cleaned and disinfected regularly.
- Keep participants safe by using good transfer skills, lifting techniques, and maintaining a clean and uncluttered environment around them.
Adapting To The Needs Of The Participants
Due to their coping nature, most NDIS participant would change their needs and requirement over the period of time. This means the support works should be quite flexible and adaptive towards these changes so that they can keep delivering the compassionate care they as assigned by an NDIS provider.
Moreover, they may require to make changes in the NDIS plans as well to keep everything unhindered for the participant.
Conclusion
Being a support worker is both challenging and rewarding at the same time and they need to strive to achieve excellence continuously in their work. With these best practices and strategies mentioned above, a support worker is likely to offer very best quality care and supports that participants need, making a real difference in their lives.
If you are a support worker looking to get relevant information regarding NDIS or NDIS providers or have a general query regarding how to keep up with the needs of the participants, feel free to contact ZedCare Abity Services – one of the leading registered NDIS providers in Australia.
